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Thoughts from Power Technical University in Miami

By: Jeff Scheel. What an exciting week in Miami, FL!!! I spent last week at Power Technical University, helping people Think Power Linux. We had lots of great discussions. A big "thank you" goes out to all who attended sessions, a bigger "THANK YOU" to those who asked questions and participated in the discussion.

Here are some my key thoughts from the event:

The interest in Linux continues to increase. Although I don't keep formal counts, attendance at the Linux sessions is up over last year which was better than the previous. The first Trends and Directions presentation was standing-room-only, largely due to overflow from the other sessions. But even before the overflow wave started, we had at least 40 attendees in the room. I've posted the deck for people to review who didn't make the session.

Power customers continue to grapple with the question of "Why Power Linux?" Those attending the sessions are frequently feeling like they're trying to convice their enterprises to consider Power when deploying Linux. When I provide the simplified answer of there being two reasons to do Power Linux -- the value of the Power Platform (virtualization, RAS, and performance) and all of the additional value-add items that we provide (pre-load, Installation Toolkit, Simplified Setup Tool, Software Development Toolkit, and Think Power Linux community) -- the answer seems to resonate. Folks understand that the platform provides value to all Power operating systems. They also appreciate the value-add initiatives that reduce their time-to-value for Linux solutions on Power Systems.

The 2011 focus items on the SDK for application development and the new Think Power Linux community are definitely needed and timely. The reception of these items have been resoundingly positive. Customers are happy that we're working to simplify the porting process with the SDK and they're looking for places to ask their questions and find the latest information on the product.

In a great discussion with a Power Linux customer, I learned that customers are still grappling with backup solutions similar to makesysb. While we have an open source solution that we're looking at for our Installation Toolkit next year, this customer discovered that Storix has made their SBAdmin product available for Power Linux. He implemented and was very impressed with the function, support, and price. What a great thing to learn and hear from a customer!

If you attended the conference, I hope you found as much value as I did. If you didn't attend, perhaps you join us at a future event.